The author is an Indian executive, specialising in the automobile manufacturing industry and currently based in Muscat, Oman. These are his authentic first-hand experiences of China and his impressions of some of the manufacturing factories there.

Start of the journey...

Took a flight from Muscat to Dubai to catch the direct flight to Shanghai. Emirates has a direct flight of 9.03 hrs, non stop which flies over the entire width of India, from Kutch to Assam.

Reached Shanghai after flying eastwards, after a time of 9 hrs, infact we reached about 15 minutes before scheduled arrival time.

After reaching the airport, I realized the size of the airport and China. The airport has more than 300 counters, just to check in passengers for flights.

I bought a ticket for a local flight to a place called Wenzhou, and they told me to reach counter no. 8, I was unable to believe myself, since I was able to see numbers only between 100 to 200.

I asked for directions with two three people and then realized that the counter numbers started from 1 and went upto 300+, so then one realizes how big International airports should be and are really built with foresight.

Compared to this and considering the volume of traffic that our Mumbai ( Bombay ) airport handles , we need an airport that is about 5 times bigger than the current with a good tall building which lets us breathe and hits you with its sheer size.

When one lands at the Airport, we had to fill in three forms, one for health, one for immigration and the other for customs.

There were about 40 odd counters for immigration and all were full since there were three or four flights, that had arrived, especially from Europe.

The Europeans, especially Germans, French and Italians, were present and most of them carried big portfolios.

I had met an Indian on flight, who has a business in Dubai and was traveling to meet his suppliers, he trades in steel and imports into Dubai and exports it to Iran.

He explained that all the Europeans were headed to Beijing since there was an International fair of Garments & designer wear.

Also, almost all the known world famous brands have their factories in China so you can get Versace and Lanvin and Cartier and Pierre Cardin etc all made originally in China.

Coming to the Chinese, the other striking feature is the equality of labor and opportunities since the counters mentioned above were most of them manned by girls between the age of 25-30 and work extremely efficiently.